9 results
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2012-708
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Seafood CRC: quantifying physiological and behavioural responses of cultured abalone to stress events

It is desirable for any primary producer to understand the health and welfare of their stock. This will ultimately enable optimal production and return on investment. The challenge in any aquaculture system is ‘observing’ the physiological and behavioural responses associated with environment,...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 1999-162
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Evaluating the effectiveness of marine protected areas as a fisheries management tool

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are being proclaimed around the world with the stated primary purposes of enhancing fisheries stocks and/or conserving marine biodiversity. In Australia, in response to a joint State/Commonwealth agreement to establish a National Representative System of MPAs (NRSMPA)...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2015-024
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT

Managing ecosystem interactions across differing environments: building flexibility and risk assurance into environmental management strategies

Summary The overarching aim of this research was to provide an improved understanding of the environmental interactions of Atlantic Salmon farming and to provide recommendations to both government and industry on monitoring and management strategies that are appropriate to the level of risk...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Industry

Abalone Aquaculture Subprogram: environmental requirements of abalone

Project number: 1997-323
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $138,044.75
Principal Investigator: Chris Burke
Organisation: University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Project start/end date: 21 Oct 1997 - 30 Oct 2001
:

Need

The rapid expansion of the Australian abalone culture industry is being underpinned by advances in research and development that have seen tank designs and formulated diets become far more cost-effective. Market prospects are excellent (Johnston, 1996) and investment capital and available sites do not seem to be limiting factors. The hatchery sector is performing very well and its capacity is expanding rapidly.

The major threat to this optimistic scenario is a decline in the health status of abalone and the most likely cause is inadequate water quality. The threat is real based on results obtained from our previous FRDC-funded, environmental requirements (bioassay) research. The 30% reduction in growth rate noted above would be enough to destroy profit margins in most aquaculture industries.

We need to determine safe levels of more of the water quality variables that threaten the health of abalone and to refine the estimates for some of the variables assessed so far; greenlip abalone have proved to be even more sensitive to ammonia and nitrite than we had expected. In some states there is more emphasis on blacklip abalone culture and we need to assess that species at least in terms of its sensitivity to the most likely stressors. We also need to develop diagnostic tools for the tissue damage that these water quality variables do when outside these safe ranges so that health workers can identify the cause of a health problem in abalone.

This project is compatible with the FRDC strategic plan as it is commercially attractive (prevents loss of profitability), it is feasible (the experimental system, methods and expertise have already been developed), it is collaborative (hosted by industry), has been given the highest priority by the Subprogram Steering Committee, it relates strongly to growth and survival within aquaculture development, and the species involved are primarily being produced for the Asia - Pacific market. Additionally, it contributes to export technology (live holding) and Ecosystem Protection by defining tolerances of a key commercial and recreational species.

Objectives

1. Overall objective is to provide the information needed for industry to reduce its operating costs (water exchange) or increase production (through higher stocking densities) in a manner that does not compromise the health of the abalone through inadequate water quality.
2. Specifically, we aim to establish safe operating levels for a range of water quality variables
3. We also aim to identify stress-specific changes in the structure or biochemistry of abalone in relation to particular water quality problems. This will improve the diagnostic tools available to veterinary staff.
4. Finally, we plan to convey this information in a prompt and user friendly form for industry.

Final report

Adoption
PROJECT NUMBER • 2017-049
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Monitoring abalone juvenile abundance following removal of Centrostephanus and translocation

A new system of Abalone recruitment modules (ARMs) have proven to be successful in collecting juvenile abalone in Tasmanian waters. This design was subsequently transferred to the Eastern Zone, Victoria, where IMAS staff and Eastern Zone Abalone Industry Association (EZIZA) members installed ARMs at...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2014-010
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Understanding recruitment collapse of juvenile abalone in the Eastern Zone Abalone fishery – development of pre-recruitment monitoring, simulation of recruitment variation and predicting the impact of climate variation

Over the past three decades the Tasmanian Eastern Zone Abalone Fishery has experienced several fluctuations in catch and catch rates of Blacklip Abalone as well as environmental perturbations, which may be affecting productivity. The capacity to measure inter-annual variation in Blacklip Abalone...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Environment
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2011-201
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Implementing a spatial assessment and decision process to improve fishery management outcomes using geo-referenced diver data

Fishing activity was captured across 53,852 one Hectare hex grid cells across Tasmania. A total of 113,164 diving hours were recorded across 125,536 individual fishing events (Table 1). Between 2012 and 2016, the Tasmanian Geo-Fishery Dependent Data (GFDD) program captured between 85 % and 90 % of...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)